Chapter Text
No matter what she became, Alana Maxwell wasn’t born a monster. Goddard Futuristics changed its employees. When she was hired in 2013 she never thought she would become what she was in 2016, not until the night she first killed someone.
It was early in her time at Goddard Futuristics, nearly two months after Kepler finally got her to sign on. She hadn’t been expecting it, despite having been trained with a firearm and the heavy implication that she would use it. She doubted she ever would have been expecting it. There wouldn’t have been a point in her life she was ready to kill someone. It just had to happen.
It was late. She and Jacobi were the last two human beings left in the building, and two of only three life forms still there – the last being Eunomia, the laboratory’s AI assistant. Maxwell coded at her terminal. “Five more minutes,” she said, glancing momentarily up at Jacobi.
Jacobi sat backwards in a desk chair reading a broken-spined paperback copy of Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher . “Uh-huh,” he said sarcastically, turning the page. “Just like you said two hours ago.”
“Maybe ten minutes,” Maxwell conceded. “An hour, tops.”
Jacobi said nothing, gave her a disbelieving look, and returned to his book. A minute of near silence passed when, suddenly, the lights flickered and died. Protocol indicated that whenever there was a power outage of any kind, the emergency systems should engage. But they did not. The emergency lights did not turn on.
“What the Hell happened?” Jacobi asked.
“I’m not sure,” Maxwell answered. “Eunomia?” She was worried about the AI. It was her job to keep this place regulated, and in the two months Maxwell knew her, the AI had never made a mistake.
Eunomia’s chipper voice answered, “Yes, Dr. Maxwell?” She sounded fine, which confused Maxwell further. This shouldn’t happen, and it certainly shouldn’t happen while Eunomia was alive and well.
“What happened to the lights?” Maxwell asked.
“What do you mean?” Eunomia replied, her chipper tone changing, sounding slightly confused.
“They’re off!” Jacobi pointed out, “We simple humans can’t see in the dark!”
“But, that’s not possible, Mr. Jacobi, my sensors aren’t indicating anything’s wrong,” said Eunomia. “All sensory data is nominal.”
“It’s not nominal down here,” Jacobi assured her. “Check the lights.”
“The lights are…they’re off! The entire lighting grid is offline! The system’s been compromised! But…that doesn’t match my input at all!” Eunomia sounded increasingly panicked.
“Whose fault is that?!” Jacobi grumbled.
“I don’t think it’s Eunomia’s,” said Maxwell slowly. “I think...I think someone might have hacked into her receptor systems. I think they’re altering the sensory data…”
“What?” Eunomia asked, her digital voice revealing shock and horror.
“Can anybody do that?” asked Jacobi. It did sound like an impossible task to someone on the outside. But AI’s were no different from human beings in certain ways. They were still people, and people could be tricked. The difference was that when an AI was tricked, they fell for it more completely than any human being ever could.
“Yes. I could and so can four other people I can think of off the top of my head,” Maxwell answered. She absolutely could modify an AI’s sensory data. She could alter memories if she wanted to. In her hands, an AI’s brain was essentially playdough. She could do almost anything to it. But why would she? Why would anyone do that to another living being? There were times when she could understand a certain rationale behind it, when she could excuse it. But outside of the AI equivalent of electroshock treatments, therapeutically scrambling their brain, she didn’t know a reason to do it. Even if you were getting rid of something unpleasant in an AI’s software, why would you take away their free will? Every single person in the world deserved that respect. Only a monster would take it away. “But why would they want to?”
“Because another multi-billion dollar corporation is probably giving them a big fat cheque to do it,” Jacobi replied. In the light from her computer screen she saw Jacobi close his book and stand up. “Eunomia, this place’s got emergency lights.”
“Yes, Mr. Jacobi,” Eunomia sounded rattled.
“It wasn’t a question. Turn them on.”
“Oh, right,” the AI said, and the dim red lights flickered on in the lab.
“You will be okay,” Maxwell assured her. “We’ll catch whoever did this to you.”
“Thank you, Dr. Maxwell,” said a very frightened Eunomia.
Jacobi took his RIA 1911 from his holster and cocked it. “Get your gun,” he said to Maxwell.
She blinked. She wasn’t used to carrying any weapons. Jacobi always seemed to have at least a firearm on him at all times – she wouldn’t have been surprised if she found out he carried a liter of nitroglycerin – but she kept her gun in her desk drawer. She never saw the reason in carrying it around the lab, around town, around the house, or anywhere else Jacobi took his. Indeed, she knew he had a spare Glock 17 pistol in the glove compartment of his Volvo 1800 ES. The apartment that she’d visited seemed to have military equipment instead of a carpet and he always had some accelerant in a labeled pitcher in his fridge. Maxwell assumed it was some quirk of Jacobi’s. Mostly. But she had found out that many of her coworkers, including her supervisors Doctors Lisa Zimmerman and Taylor Sakaki, concealed-carried at all times. It wasn’t so much Jacobi as it was Goddard personnel in general.
“Maxwell,” Jacobi said with some force when she didn’t immediately respond. “This isn’t a joke. If someone got in here, they mean business.”
“Right.” She opened the drawer and removed the gun from where it was acting as a particularly dangerous paperweight. It was a Beretta M9. She had initially been given an NAA Sidewinder, but Jacobi talked her into getting the Beretta. (“Bond used a Beretta, not an M9, obviously. But I like the M9. Nine millimeter, semi-auto, 17-shot magazine. M9’s are great for concealed-carry; they’re safe, easy to modify, easy to take care of, you’ll love it! I’ve got one at home, and it’s awesome! You have got to get an M9 before you're stuck with your dinky Sidewinder forever.”) Jacobi was the one who took her to Goddard Futuristics’ ballistics range to try it out. And Jacobi and his gathered crowd of co-workers had been dumbstruck when Maxwell showed off the sharpshooting skills she barely knew she had. She had shot cans off fences with BB guns in Montana as a little girl, but that was hardly anything like a real gun. Apparently the skills transferred.
“Okay,” he said, “let’s go. Eunomia, work on fixing the lights, but don’t let the bastard know we’re onto them.”
“Yes, Mr. Jacobi.”
Jacobi and Maxwell split up to comb the complex for the spy. Jacobi took the C and D wings, where the ballistics labs were, and Maxwell patrolled the A and B wings, which were for computer R&D labs. Maxwell held her gun in front of her, still feeling awkward, both terrified and amused at the thought that she was carrying a loaded pistol in a blackened building as if she were Dana Scully.
She could barely believe it was her doing this. She didn’t know why she felt so strange. It wasn’t as if she was a stranger to guns. Her family had many out in Montana and often went hunting. When she was growing up they had had four hunting rifles, three shotguns – even though food was readily available without killing it themselves – and a handgun for “home protection,” despite the fact they lived in a town where everyone feared and revered her father. The residents would sooner starve than steal from Pastor Maxwell.
She was never interested in the firearms beyond the BB gun she played with. Nor, as a girl, was she forced to attend hunting trips like her three brothers were. And their hobby seemed as different from this as shooting a home movie differed from a feature film. This was so much more real. And she could barely begin to comprehend the consequences.
Maxwell happened to find the spy first.
She heard a noise, just a quiet scuffling sound, maybe a boot on tile. She stiffened, staring into the darkness. A shape rounded a corner. Tall, dressed all in black from boots to mask. He startled her and almost before she knew what she was doing, she had fired off four shots. Her wrist cracked back from the recoil. The bang, bang, bang, bang! echoed endlessly around her. The man fell to the ground, collapsing like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Her gun felt hot and heavy in her hands. She slowly lowered it. Her heart was pounding. She stood staring for a long time, the only sound was the ringing in her ears and her own desperate breathing.
“Maxwell?!” Jacobi’s voice from behind her. She didn’t know how long he – or she, herself – had been standing there. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t respond. She stood transfixed over her victim. “Alana?!”
It was the first time he ever said her given name. It startled her out of her near-fugue state. She wasn’t used to being called by her first name by anyone anymore. Even before Goddard Futuristics, where everyone seemed to exclusively refer to each other by either title and/or last name, she had gotten very used to simply being “Dr. Maxwell.” She was never close enough to anyone to become “Alana.” When was the last time anyone had called her that? Was it MIT? Was it before that? Was it her family or her high school teachers?
She turned to face him. “D-Daniel?” It was hard to get the word out, her throat was tightly knotted from emotion and the name felt unfamiliar on her tongue. But for some reason there was something deeply comforting in calling him by his first name and hearing him say hers. It meant they knew each other. It meant they trusted each other. They cared about each other enough to break the title-last name convention.
They were friends .
They were friends and he could help her with this.
He had her back, just as she would have his.
“Are you hurt?” he asked. She shook her head. His run became a jog, then a walk as he approached the body.
Maxwell thought she might cry and cursed herself for that, and for shaking so badly. Her eyes followed Jacobi to the corpse. She watched as he examined the body, tears flooding her eyes. She couldn’t force them back. They streamed silently down her cheeks.
The four shots had hit the intruder in the shoulder, the gut, the chest, and the last cleaved his face, entering on the left side of his chin and exiting behind his right ear. There was no need to check for a pulse. He was dead. The pool of cooling blood looked black in the dark. There was a gun beside him. Jacobi picked it up and checked the clip. Full. He checked the man’s equipment belt. A touch screen, a glasscutter, a thumb drive, latex gloves, a few other tools. Jacobi pocketed the drive.
He pulled off the man’s balaclava, letting his head thud hard against the ground. Jacobi took out his flashlight and turned the light on the man’s face. Maxwell did not recognize the face beneath the mask, but that might have been because it was so altered by that last bullet. The hall reeked. “Do you know him?” Jacobi asked.
Maxwell shook her head and managed a whispered, “No.”
“We’re okay,” he said. He looked back up at Maxwell. She wasn’t. She did this. She killed a man. Oh God. She’d killed a man. Oh God. She sank to her knees, one hand over her mouth. He was dead, gone, extinguished, and it was her fault. “...Alana…” Jacobi said her name again, looked from her to the body, and back. Seeing her expression, he sighed, and then spoke gently, more gently than she had ever heard him before, “I’ll clean this up. You go get Eunomia up and running. Meet me back in your lab.”
Maxwell nodded but didn’t reply. The hall felt longer than it did before. Darker. She felt heavier.
“Is that you, Dr. Maxwell? I can’t tell what’s going on!” Eunomia said hopelessly when Maxwell entered the sub-basement where her CPU was stored. “My recording units picked up gunshots! Are you and Mr. Jacobi alright?”
“Yes…” Maxwell answered quietly. “Jacobi and I are fine.” But she couldn’t elaborate, not even when Eunomia asked. She couldn’t get it out over the lump in her throat.
Within minutes, she had Eunomia running properly again, having removed the program that was altering the AI’s sensory input. The lights came back on immediately. Eunomia had already made that repair, but hadn’t been sure if it was safe to re-engage them. Once done, Maxwell went back to the lab and sunk into her desk chair. She stared at the wall, trying not to think about what happened and thinking of nothing else.
A shape rounding a corner. Black on black. The weight of the gun in her hand. Firing the gun before she even knew it, she felt it snapping back in her wrist, the recoil shooting down her arm.
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
The black shape, a human being, falling, crumpling, collapsing to the ground.
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
Blood spattering outward, black arcs in the dark. The metal stench.
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
When exactly did he die? Was it the first shot? The second? Had he survived long enough to feel his skull crack and brain matter gush outward? Was he dead as soon as the bullet hit or was there a period of time when he was horribly aware he was dying? Did he see her before she pulled the trigger? Was there a moment where he faced his killer and knew what she was? Was he afraid?
It felt like hours before Jacobi came back. There was blood on his clothes, but he’d washed it off his hands. Jacobi looked at her and the businesslike expression disappeared from his face; it softened into a look Maxwell had never seen on him before. An expression she had very rarely seen in her lifetime. Empathy. Sympathy. Something like that. No one had ever cared about her enough. “Do you want a coffee?” he asked.
She nodded.
He crossed to the Keurig and popped in one of the plastic pods. “Half and half, right?”
“Yes,” Maxwell said quietly. He took the carton from the mini-fridge and poured some into her cup, mixing it with a plastic stirrer. He sucked the excess coffee off the stirrer before tossing it into the trash. Then he crossed to Maxwell, pushing the chair he’d been sitting in earlier closer so he could sit next to her.
He put the coffee on her desk, took her gun from his belt and put it back in the drawer, closing it softly. Then he took another gun from his opposite side, the Colt from the intruder, and put it in front of her, beside the coffee. “If you hadn’t killed him, he would have killed you.”
Maxwell nodded. She knew he was trying to make her feel better, but it didn’t help.
Jacobi must have seen that because, after a long moment of silence, he asked, “...You good?”
“I’m a monster,” she whispered.
Jacobi said something she didn’t expect. “Yeah, you are.”
She let out a sound, a bark; even she didn’t know if it was a laugh or a sob. The knot in her throat tightened painfully. She put her face in her hands and sobbed.
Jacobi put his hand on her shoulder, awkwardly, as if he wasn’t used to the gesture. “Alana, look at me.” She obeyed, her vision blurry from the tears. Jacobi looked kind, understanding, even with the stain of blood on his t-shirt. “You are a monster, but so is Major Kepler. So’re your supervisors. So’s whoever works there,” he nodded towards the desk next to hers. Then his dark narrow eyes found her wide brown ones. He spoke even more frankly, “And so am I. It comes with the job. But just because we do terrible things, just because we’re monsters, doesn’t mean it’s easy.”
She let out a shuddering breath, “I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can ,” he assured her. “You can and you have to. We don’t get a choice.” He removed his hand from her shoulder, sat down, and let out a breath. “If it helps…it gets easier. After a while, it doesn’t hurt so much.”
“How many times have you done this, Daniel?” Maxwell asked. “How many people have you killed?”
Jacobi raised his eyebrows and gave her a mirthless smile. A gallows smile. “Jeez, I don’t know. I’ve lost count. I lost count a loooong time ago.”
“How do you deal with it?” she whispered.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he answered. “Probably makes me worse, but,” he shrugged, “it’s better without the pain. Most of them…” he reconsidered, “A lot of them would do the same to you. And if they weren’t going to, there are people in Goddard who would.” A long silence in which Maxwell considered what he had said. For all she knew, Goddard Futuristics had an entire division to take out disloyal employees, or Jacobi himself would be the one sent to kill her. Jacobi broke the silence, “Eventually, it makes sense.”
“What does?” Maxwell asked.
He gestured vaguely around him. “This place. The rules. The missions. You start to understand why you’re a monster. You go with it. You embrace it.”
She was surprised. She didn’t think that was possible. She laughed mirthlessly and incredulously. “Bullshit,” she choked.
“I know you don’t believe me now, but you will. In the end it isn’t so bad…in the end we get paid well, we get to see the world, we get to do what we want and nobody can stop us, and we get homes...friends…respect. All things considered, being a monster is pretty good.”
A pause as Maxwell considered what he said. Then, slowly, she nodded. There were benefits to working for Goddard Futuristics, that was true. No one here tried to stop her research. No one here wanted her to appear before an ethics committee. No one made sexist comments. And she had Jacobi. She picked up her coffee and took a sip. Jacobi sat back, watching her, waiting for her. The weight of what she had done still hurt, but the promise that this pain would go away was reassuring. “Daniel?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”